Our Newest Adventure continued...

Our home, post-explosion

This picture doesn't do justice to show the damage done to our home...


Picking up where I left off last time...

That Friday we took Emmy to daycare again, so she could have a "normal" day. It was somewhat eery being in the house with it such a mess, and seeing the damage in the daylight really made it sink in more how bad this really was. The south wall of our home (the right outside wall in the above picture) is bowed out in the middle. It's separated from the 2nd floor almost 2 inches in some spots (the kitchen ceiling and guest room floor)!! Dan & I met with the insurance adjuster, the structural engineer & two contractors during the day on Friday. It was nice to have such quick responses from everyone, but it was also somewhat overwhelming to see & talk to everyone all in one day. After spending more time in the house, we took an inventory of the damages to the "contents" (i.e. the "stuff") in our house, and it really isn't too bad... The biggest of it is the living room furniture (couch, 2 chairs, rug & ottomen) which are all damaged out b/c of the broken glass from the windows. Otherwise the rest is smaller items; pillows, picture frames, dishes and spices from the kitchen. It really could have been much worse. 

After picking Emmy up from daycare we decided to grab an early dinner in Rochester at the Rochester Mills Brewery, one of our favorites. We had a really fun dinner as a family, almost nice enough to forget what we'd been dealing with that week. But instead of going home, we had to head back to the hotel for the night.

There's our house, on the news again...

The weekends were the hardest part of our hotel stay, because those are our favorite times to just be together, hanging out in our home on the weekend. You can imagine it would not be the same "relaxing" in a hotel room all weekend. I had my best friend Amanda's baby shower that Saturday during the day, so Dan took Emmy to his parents house for the day, that way she would have more room to move around & play. My mom brought me back to their house after the shower, and we all had dinner together, which was nice.

Sunday morning snuggles with uncle B

We stayed through most of the day Sunday as well, and unfortunately Emmy had some major blow outs while we were there. I guess I should say fortunately, because we had immediate access to laundry, which we definitely used!! At first we chalked it off to the meatloaf she had eaten for dinner, for the first time, the previous night. But when it happened a second time, I started to wonder... Grandma Deanna offered to watch her for us on Monday while we met with more contractors at the house. Most of our meetings were done by midday that day, and as we were getting ready to leave, we suddenly heard this noise... which turned out to be water running in our basement, from a pipe that had burst! There is a half bathroom in the basement that was there when we bought the house, and apparently, behind the drywall in the bathroom, is a basement window that we did not even know existed! On the outside, the window is under our deck, so we really had never seen it before. So the window had been blown open by the blast from the explosion on the previous Wednesday, and was open to the cold all weekend long, which caused the pipe right underneath it to freeze and then burst. We're just so thankful it burst while we were home, as we were able to shut the water in the house off. Who knows what it would have been like had it happened while we weren't there!!! Our insurance called a plumber but unfortunately they couldn't get there until first thing the next morning. So we headed off to meet Deanna, Brandon & Emmy for dinner. However, as soon as they pulled into the parking lot to meet us, Emmy threw up! Turns out our poor bean had a stomach virus :-( We got her back to the hotel & she went to bed ok. However, just a short time later, Dan started throwing up!! The expression "when it rains, it pours", was entirely applicable here.

I called in to work again on Tuesday, however one of us needed to meet the plumber at the house to fix the pipe that burst, so Grandma Deanna again graciously stepped in & came out to our hotel to watch Emmy for the morning while I went to the house, and Dan slept off the flu. It was a challenge being cooped up in a hotel with a sick 1 year old that day! She did enjoy "run run run"-ing up & down the hallways though!! I finally returned to work that Wednesday, and it was honestly nice to do something "normal" for the first time in a week! However there was still a lot to be taken care of with the house, namely finding us a rental home to live in while our home was being repaired!! Our insurance company had a temporary housing company looking for us, but they were located in Texas, so they lacked a real understanding of what we needed & in what areas we'd be ok with living. I wasn't sleeping much anyways those days, so I spent some time on craigslist & realty websites emailing people to see if they would consider a 6 month lease, as that was the time frame our insurance was quoting us at for repairs. I got a few responses back, and one of them actually called me about coming to see their house! It turned out that their last tenant had just moved out the day after the explosion, they had the house cleaned that Saturday, and then posted it for rent on Craigslist Monday morning. When I emailed them, they checked their church directory, and it turns out we go to the same church! They really felt like this was all meant to be (and so did we!), and they even turned down a realtor's offer well over their asking price for rent to let us lease the house. Luckily, our insurance company was able to match that realtor's offer for rent, so it's turning out to be a win-win situation for everyone!

Our "summer cottage"

We got the keys to the home that Friday, and officially moved in the following Tuesday. It was pretty hectic & stressful over the weekend packing up everything we could. Luckily we had my parents to help us watch Emmy while we packed & help get things moved over to the new house. I was so excited to have found a rental home for us that I didn't consider what it would mean to move without having any time to pack!! We took as much as we could that weekend, and then tagged the rest that we wanted moved over for the contents company to bring to us. Anything we didn't bring with us, the contents company packed up & moved into storage for us, so our home is now completely empty. It's pretty bizarre.

Emmy was very excited when more of her toys were
brought to our "summer cottage"!

So we are pretty settled into the "summer cottage" now. There are still boxes to unpack, but a lot of them are just my clothes, and I'm slowly going through them & getting rid of old clothes as I unpack them. The insurance company rented us furniture & housewares instead of moving all of our stuff over, so we have enough to get by with, but we're starting to miss "our stuff". But in the end, it's a very nice house, and I'm so grateful we found it.

As far as our house goes, nothing is happening yet. We received the estimate from the contractor last Thursday, and he was supposed to run through it with the insurance adjustor Friday, however the adjustor was sick & had to cancel. And now our contractor is out of town all this week. So the contractor anticipates starting work on the house next Tuesday, pending any questions about the estimate from the insurance company. As far as the estimate goes, it's really just a starting point. They are going to have to open up the south wall of the house, starting on the outside, and they really won't know what they're dealing with until they open it up. Once it's open, they'll fix what needs to be fixed, re-secure the wall, and put it back together.